The Sudsy Lake/Transcript
WORK IN PROGRESS; NEEDS HUMAN REVIEW [ gunshots, glass shatters ] harold: It's time to head north, up to the unspoiled woodlands and unpolluted air of places like this, where people don't seem to want to go. But we're up here on your behalf, beaming back an action-packed, fun-filled show for you to appreciate -- even though the ratings suggest otherwise. And here's the probable cause for all that, the star of "the red green show" and a close personal uncle of mine, ladies and gentlemen, mr. Red green! Thank you, harold. Thank you, and welcome to possum lodge. I don't want to take all the credit for the show. Harold's got to share the blame for at least his part. Oh, I guess you're talking about my state-of-the-art visual effects. [ keyboard clacking ] wa-a-a! Nothing like a little break from content, I always say. Actually, we've had a little problem up at the lodge this week. You know, we like to think of this as virgin territory. Nothing personal, harold. But, you know, sometimes civilization kind of encroaches here and messes things up, and we got to do some cleanup. For example, we might have to replant some trees that we've driven over or replace the topsoil in the den. Or sometimes on a Saturday, we'll just shovel the empties off the beach. Yeah, remember that time we had the big oil spill? Yeah, well, that's why we make stinky peterson wear a bathing cap now. Right. Yeah, we have had some environmental problems in the past. We used to get a lot of gas leaks up here, and then we realized that the propane tanks are left-hand thread. After that, we could actually tighten the coupling rather than just wrap it in the duct tape there. Of course, once we started doing that, the campfires got a lot more controllable and managed to bring the forest fire level down a peg or two. Pretty soon, the geese and the loons started coming back and nesting on the lake again. Then we could go out hunting. So, what's the big emergency this week, uncle re-e-ed? We're getting a lot of buildup of foam on possum lake. Little bit of foam is of no consequence. Yeah, okay. I agree, but this is real thick foam, harold. You can't see the lake. You can't see the dock. You can't see the canoes. I was out there this morning in a motorboat, and, boy, is it ever tough whipping around when you can't see the dock or other boats or rafts or the shore or barbecues or people sunbathing on the beach. I thought I heard screaming. Yeah, well, anyway, we either have a pollution problem here, or possum lake is rabid. Anyway, better get on with the show there, harold. Oh, yeah, right. What are you guys doing inside? [ scoffs ] how can you justify being in a lodge on such a beautiful day? Well, it's a glorious day for a game of golf. There's no snow. There's no lightning. I'd be up for another 18 if anybody's interested, huh? Aren't you supposed to be working today, bob? I'm working, eddie. In fact, I'm -- I'm in here on ministry business. Do you have any idea what this is? Well, it's too clean to be a cookie. Exactly. I was on the 12th hole, and I duck-hooked a 3-wood into possum lake. Of course, it was on purpose. It was a joke thing. Well, you got it. You got it. So, naturally I didn't count the stroke, but... But I reached in and I fished this out. I looked at it very closely, and I noticed how clean this ball really is. So I looked at the end of possum lake, and I saw that it was covered in foam. Oh, yeah. Well, that's probably just the whitecaps from the waves. You know, sometimes it gets like that, you know, the whitecaps, and they wave like that. That could happen. No, this stuff is 6 feet deep, pink, and smells like old fat. Probably foam from some form of low-grade detergent or something like that. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, eddie? What kind of cheap shot is that, bob? Are you saying my food makes toxic suds, or are you gonna make a joke about me washing my hair in the lake? [ laughs ] that's a good joke you were thinking of. [ laughs ] you know, some people might laugh at that, you know, because humor is such a subjective thing, isn't it? You know, the way it... [ laughs ] I'm gonna go, uh, read about the subjective humor element of it all. [ laughs ] listen, eddie... If I find out that sticky froth on possum lake is coming from your kitchen, well, I'm just gonna have to inspect it on behalf of the department. Now, that's my job. You know, bob, there's been something I've wanted to tell you for a long time. Oh, yeah? You're a crappy golfer! That's it. I'm gonna report you to the ministry! And if I don't get you on the -- on the suds thing, I'm gonna get you on your meat loaf! There's nothing wrong with my meat loaf! Oh, come on, now, eddie. Don't say things you don't mean. Good thing it's tee-off time right now. I'd report you right now! Why does he do that to me? He knows I hate confrontation. I'm an artist. I wear my heart on my sleeve! A-are you enjoying the cookies? Uh, no. I have an eating disorder. And, you know, these could cure it. [ door rattles ] you want to get that, bill? That would be noel. [ rattling continues ] [ hammer pounding ] [ saw cutting ] you don't ask for a password? You let just anybody in here? Well, I-I heard somebody having trouble opening an unlocked door. I was pretty sure it'd be you. That matters not, mister. Poor security is what you've got here. Now, I'm sorry I had to come down on you like that, but that's my responsibility. Which reminds me, I've got a report. I just completed an exhaustive surveillance of the lake and surrounds, and I'm happy to report everything is code normal. Well, what about the 6 feet of foam down at the south end? I missed that. Guess that calls for a redo. [ sniffs ] starship entry 116-e. Area surveillance incomplete. Reconnoiter a.S.A.P. Don't you worry, red. I'll find it, I.D. It, finger the source. Well, be sure to wash your hands before supper, huh? [ coughs ] water! You want to take some cookies with you? Oh, yeah. Thanks. Wouldn't want to go out there unarmed. [ spoons and guitar playing ] ♪ up at the lodge ♪ ♪ where the men like to play ♪ ♪ there's noogies and wedgies at all times of day ♪ ♪ booby traps, cow flaps, short-sheeted beds ♪ ♪ beds ♪ ♪ but don't play "outrun the bullet" ♪ ♪ unless you're a professional ♪ this week on the "handyman corner," uh, we're gonna show you how to turn a negative into a positive, and I don't just mean hiring him as a producer/director. I'm talking about the frustrations of what happens when your lawn mower meets your garden hose. Uh, we've all experienced this, some of us more than others. You know, I've never been involved with any high-level management meetings. But if I'd have been there when they were designing the garden hose and realizing it was gonna lie on the lawn and there was gonna be a lawn mower going by, I'm not sure I would've picked green, you know, as the ideal color. But hey, I'm just a consumer, and that carries its own responsibilities. But rather than just throw all these little hoselets into the lake or what have you, I'm gonna show you today how you can create some interesting alternatives of using these things. The first one, for example, is a little bit obvious. But, uh, this would be your high-volume, long-range drinking straw for those unfortunate times when you're at a party or what have you and for whatever reason you just can't pick up your beverage -- or you can't afford another one but he's got one -- that kind of thing. You know, something else -- sound travels in straight lines. People don't know that. It won't go around corners, so you can't hear what they're saying about you down the hall. You have an ear trumpet like this with a flexible hose on it like this. You stand here, you put this end to your ear, and you put the other end... [ water spurts ] [ clears throat ] well, sound travels underwater real good, too, so that's another bonus. You ever notice when you pick up a paint can, the handle can just, uh, rip right through your skin and just take the bone right off there if you're not careful. You take a little piece of your hose, and you slit it up lengthwise. You put that through the handle, and, uh, look at that. Just goes on there. No problem. And you pick it up. Yeah. Oh. Oh. Well, of course, the first thing that you can do you know, with your hose couplings is you can actually re-create the whole hose just by putting the pieces together. Except it'll be about 3 feet shorter 'cause you got to cut up one of the pieces for washers. And another thing you can do, which I think is darn attractive, is your own personal bike lock. You would probably want to have a bike worth locking, for starters. So wrap this around here. Now, you would tighten that up real good. Use vise grips or a wrench or a pipe wrench -- whatever you have -- on there, because nobody can steal your bike that way unless they have pliers. And criminals just don't think ahead like that. But I think the best application of this is what I'm wearing right here. You see this? You catching this? Are you getting this on camera? These are suspenders. They go down through my belt loops and up and over with the couplings attached and everything. And the beauty of these is in the winter, you can fill them with some sort of a hearty soup, you know, to keep you warm. I would suggest a cream of mushroom or possibly even a beef barley or soup du jour, if you just want to fly by the seat of your pants. But I think these are dandy. And, you know, I'm even thinking of patenting these. I'm gonna call them "panty hose." anyway, until the next time, remember -- if the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy. [ water spraying ] oh, got a leak here. [ wind howling ] "it is winter. "animals lie in a deep sleep, "hidden away from air and light in a place called the senate." so, anyway, bob has been accusing eddie of polluting the lake with his cooking. And eddie doesn't take criticism well, even with all the practice he's had. Uncle red, excuse me, but noel asked me to tell you to drop by his place, okay? So I told you, so there. What does he want, harold? Power, I think. You mean now. I'm sorry. I have -- I have no idea. Well, that would've been my guess. Funny what people choose to be defensive about, isn't it? I mean, eddie with his cooking and moose with his weight and bob with his golfing. And you, harold, you with your complexion and your teeth and your eyesight and the way you walk and the way you talk and your hair and your school marks. Okay, uncle red, thanks very much. Thank you. I was wondering, you know, uh, did bob ever find out what those pink bubbles were? You know, he works for the ministry of the environment. I think pink bubbles would pretty much fall into government jurisdiction, wouldn't it? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it does. Actually, what he did was he sent bill out in a canoe right into the foam, and bill just disappeared. Never seen from since. So then bob teed up some balls and started just driving golf balls into the foam. I think he was testing the texture or the cohesiveness or something. Hasn't learned anything, but he has located bill's head twice. Oh, well, that's important, too. Okay, well, we should get on with the show, actually, now. Yeah. Yeah, okay. I'll just go see what noel's got on his mind. Shouldn't take long. Wa-a-a! Okay. Now, I'm this close to a discovery, a breakthrough on the frothy foam case. You mean the suds on the lake? Shh! You have almost no muscle tone at all. J-e-l-l-o. I don't know where you find the energy to pull your pants up. Well, the suspenders help. Feel that. Oh, I don't want to feel. Give it a feel. I don't want to. Come on. Granite? Yeah. Congratulations. Can I kick your tires now? I can bench-press 250 pounds. Three sets of 12. Boom! Boom! Boom! Is that something you do for work, or is that, like, a party piece? It's something I do for life. Oh. I'm tough, red -- physically, mentally. Kind of like chuck norris. That guy on "love connection"? I pity you, red. One of these days, you're gonna wake up dead, and you won't know what hit you. That's why I got to solve the sudsy lake case, and I am this close to discovering the perps. [ sniffs ] the perps? Tech talk. Okay. I observed some... Suspicious activity. Yeah? Some around the large cedar prefab cottage down on the far end of possum lake. Oh, yeah. That is a beautiful cottage. Nice cottage. Oh, center hall plan, three oversized bedrooms. And that living room, you could play handball in it, anyway. Yeah. On the evening prior to the mysterious appearance of that diaphanous detergent residue -- what? That crap on the lake. Oh, yeah. I was engaged in some security surveillance on the main road. I was in the ditch. Oh, yeah. I observed a truck approaching said cottage at 1:15, 3:27, and then later on. Yeah. I-I can't really be exact on that time because at 3:27, the truck ran over my, uh, watch. Oh. Yeah. I can tell you that the vehicle had studded tires. Yeah. Oh, yeah, sure. With that tire tread, I can run a trace on those. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so what? With the appearance of the foam the very next day, I think we can come to the conclusion that those people are responsible for releasing illegal and toxic chemicals into the lake. Or they're running some sort of carpet cleaning business. I'm not sure -- we're still at the theory stage. Yeah. Uh, all right. Well, I'll tell you what, noel. Why don't you go up there and check that out, because that way you won't be here, talking to me, and you might be able to get an imprint of their front grille maybe on your forehead. I knew you'd back me up on this. I'm gonna head up there now. Okay. Listen, uh, red, why don't you jog or something? Well, maybe after lunch, eh? I'll see you later. 10-4. Yeah. Oh, and, red? Yeah? I probably wouldn't tell anybody about this. Oh, don't worry. [ siren wailing ] I hate this. [ film projector clicking ] red: It's hockey night in canada. Bill and I went down to possum arena, took a bucketful of pucks. And bill got his skates on there. He's got kind of weak ankles, which actually extend right up to the top of his tuque. And we're gonna do a little bit of hockey practice. Bill's, uh, stuck. Looks like bill spent most of his career on the bench. Or under the bench. Bill's basically a goaltender, so, uh, he is gonna get in net there -- literally in net. Oh, hang on. Hang on. He's all right. But he's got all the padding. He's got the stick and he's got the gloves. I've never seen anybody put on padding before, but this didn't strike me -- and then he had to balance on his skates, and I thought, "why don't we put him on the ice and just kind of kneel into them," you know? But, uh, when you're trying to think of a system that'll work, uh, it's tough to do with bill. But eventually he got everything on there, and I went out around the blue line and had all the pucks and sort of spread them out, uh, put them in line. And the idea is I'm gonna start firing shots at him. I can really whip that -- oh, oh, oh! Nice save. Then he got himself regrouped, and now I'm gonna mix up the shots -- a slapper and a wrist shot and then an overhand slider and, you know, a kind of sideways, submarine curve shot. And by golly, I just started getting lucky there. I'm catching the top corner and putting a few into the 5 hole -- or I think it's 4.8, metric, hole. Oh, sorry. Sorry, bill. So bill said, "hold everything," he says. He wants to try a different approach. And he really -- he felt the padding was holding him back. So this is very strange. He starts taking all the padding off, just throwing her down on the ice there. And I didn't know how far he was gonna go with this -- you know, going down to the bare skiff on the ice or whatever. But no, he just got rid of all the padding and figured he'd be more mobile. And, of course, now I'm motivated to really rip the puck in there. That's fun, that's fun. For me, that's fun. I call that fun. Call me crazy. And I rip her in there, and here we go. Nice save. Boy. This guy, he's right. Oh, oh, oh -- yes! I don't think that was going in anyway, but... Oh, man! Bill's got great -- look at this, look at this. And...Got it! Wow! Bill has really got some -- look, look, look. Oh! Gosh, what a ballet save. Beautiful work, bill, beautiful. Well, I don't know. I think this possum lake foam thing is just part of a natural cycle -- freezing, thawing, rising, falling, scumming over with pink foam. I remember one time we had thousands of splinters of wood, naugahyde, and plastic out there. That turned out to be nothing. You mean when the old marina blew up? That wasn't nothing. Well, no, I meant nothing that had any environmental side effects. Nobody cares what you blow up as long as it doesn't release any chemicals. We've dumped a lot worse into possum lake over the years, including each other. If people could see the bottom, they wouldn't be concerned about a little bit of pink foam on the top, I'll tell you that. There's a hundred years of garbage down there, plus four stoves, a combination washer/dryer, a dozen old boats, nine car batteries, plus the cars they come out of, and a full set of patio furniture, including mosquito coils. Boy, uncle red, you have an amazing memory for stuff like that. Well, it's been a memorable summer, harold. [ screeching ] oh, that's the call of the meeting! Come on, uncle red. Let's go. Maybe bob and noel have some answers for us. Well, that would be worth seeing. Anyway, this should go pretty quickly. We don't spend a lot of time on environmental issues... Which you probably already guessed. [ screeching continues ] [ indistinct conversations ] stinky, get a chair. Hurry up. All right. Put the pens away. Get a chair. Okay, all rise! Get up, get up! All: Quando omni flunkus, moritati. [ clears throat ] yeah, yeah, yeah. Eddie wants me to tell you that he's got a tray of cookies here if anybody's hungry. [ all murmuring ] not just now. Thank you very much. Uh, the floor recognizes bob stuyvesant. Thank you, red. Well, I ran a battery of tests on the lake water, and I think I've been able to pinpoint the source of the pink foam. [ cheering ] thank you. My goodness. Look at that. Oh, look -- I was only 6 over par on that one hole. How about the foam, bob? Oh, yeah, right. Well, the foam -- the foam is 260 parts per million of pine scrub. It's a common dish detergent. Well, I guess that lets me off the hook. I don't use liquid detergent. Well, it's not liquid. It's a fine powder. It's used for dishwashers. Looks a lot like flour. And what are you insinuating -- that -- that I'm using -- that I'm using detergent instead of flour? Is that it?! Oh, get real! Look at bill. I mean, come on, eddie. It's obvious you're using detergent in your baking. No wonder the cake pans were so easy to clean. [ laughs ] I-I'll tell you whose fault it is! It's murray's fault and those damn bulk food containers! I mean, who'd have thought the labeling would be right on it, for heaven's sake? Well, don't worry. The department of natural resources is on the job. I've ordered a water bomber to drop a load of acid on the lake. It should neutralize the ph and melt the foam down. All right. That's real good. Thank you. Hey, noel, a little bit late, aren't you? Oh, yeah. Sorry, red. I got -- I got some great news, everybody. [ chuckles ] I called, uh, the producers of "60 minutes," see if they wanted to investigate that mystery cottage up at the far end of the lake. You know, the a-frame with the wind chime. Well, they weren't too keen on that idea, but they got real excited about that pink foam. They're coming up here to do a big story on pink possum pond! [ cheering ] they're gonna treat it like some sort of miracle or something. Whoa! Anyway, we're gonna have tourists by the millions. We're all gonna be rich! [ cheering ] hold on, hold on, hold on. You got to back me on one thing, though. I might've led them to believe that, uh, well, the pink foam cures sick people and bald people. Eddie, you're gonna have to stay out of sight on this one. Anyway, they bought it, and, uh, we're all gonna be rich! [ cheering ] [ airplane approaching ] good idea I had. I can just see it. Yeah, we can probably -- what? What? Never mind, noel. I'll explain it to you later. Thank you very much, bob. Excellent work, as usual. And how about we reward bob by having him entertain us this evening? [ groaning ] here's bob. Do whatever you want to him. [ cheering ] thank you, red. [ clears throat ] well, I just want to talk to you about golf, you know, just for a change. Well, there you go. You learn something every day, don't you? Granted, it's usually the same thing that you learned the day before and the day before that. But if repetition wasn't a good thing, who'd get married? Speaking of which, if my wife is watching, I'll be coming straight home after the meeting. And if the bedroom light is on, I'll take that to mean that you're environmentally friendly. So, until next time, on behalf of myself and harold and the whole gang up here at possum lodge, keep your stick on the ice. well, then there's your 3-iron. Oh, boy, I'll tell you. She's a whimsy. Oh, yeah. What a character. Uh, quick, sassy. Always lively, though. Oh, and then your 5. This is the dark club of the bag. Really moody, unpredictable. Sometimes she's there for you, and sometimes she just pouts. I can tell you something, though. If you find a 5-iron that stands by you, take good care of her. Well, now you've got your drivers -- you know, your woods. That's what you play most of the time, isn't it? [ clears throat ]